Cake Collages Inspired by Wayne Thiebaud

I love dessert. And these are the kind of desserts I can afford to have around! The students and I have been studying the art of Wayne Thiebaud (pronounced tee-bow), and his love of all things sweet. We started by making a tablecloth out of tissue paper squares that I had cut ahead of time. Some children made abstract designs, while others made checkerboards, stripes or even fancy place mat designs.

Next we traced a slice of cake template four times onto a separate sheet of paper. I'm not a big fan of templates, but for this project we needed our subject matter to fit and be somewhat uniform. I pointed out the variations in Thiebaud's cakes according to flavors of cake, icing, and number of layers in each slice. The children used construction paper crayons to color their slices of cake, and then cut each of them out.

The last portion of the collage was plates. We used Blue Bunny Ice Cream lids as templates (they are also being saved for our bottle cap murals), and they were the perfect size. Then cakes and plates were glued to the tablecloths. A few of my older students drew cake shadows on their plates and/or rims to give them more dimension. All in all this was a great project that all of the kids enjoyed. And I was happy that the final pieces were a bit more colorful and kid oriented than the original inspiration. Dessert anyone?

  

Great Art Sites for Kids — Jackson Pollock

Well, this isn't exactly a web site full of information, more of an application posted online for use. But it is a lot of fun, and will give you a glimpse of what it is like to paint in the style of Jackson Pollock. It's not as easy as you think! Just go to jacksonpollock.org and move your mouse around the blank canvas. Slow movement will give thick trails of paint. Quick movement will draw slurpy thin waves across the page. Pause and you get a big old dollop! Each time you click, you will load the brush with a different color.

Sometimes I leave my computer at this site and let each of the kids have a turn for free choice. It is quite a treat! I hope you get a chance to create your own action painting.

Koinobori Art

This is a quick and easy lesson I used for my World Art and Art of Asia classes. Koinobori are carp streamers hung for Children's Day in Japan, which takes place on May 5th. I purchased the pre-made paper forms, and the children were shown images of koinobori hung and fluttering in the wind.

Designs were made by first coloring their streamers with crayola markers, and in my opinion, the more color the better! We then sprayed our designs with water and let them dry. During the following class, we added details with metallic paint markers, added paper streamers at the tail and glued the streamers together. A clothes pin held the tops of the projects together while they dried. Then just punch two holes and add some string. We were very happy with our beautiful designs!

The Spinning Motor Drawings

More random acts of art are occurring here at my place after lessons are done! My husband an daughter rigged up a small spinning motor (a garage sale find) with a bunch of my recycled containers saved for art classes, and made themselves a spinning drum. Then all they had to do was attach some paper, break out the markers, and go!

Their experiments included straight and wavy lines, different color groupings, and masking areas before beginning their drawings. Sharpies were the marker of choice. We have quite a collection! Here are a few in the spinning motor series. Enjoy!